MAKING OPPORTUNITIES.
THEN began a new era in the life of the girls at South Plains Academy.
They had work to do. A common interest possessed them. They had a
leader; such an one as they had never known before. She was capable of
originating and guiding. She not only knew how to talk, but how to _do_.
Committee meetings became the fashion of the day. No time now for
loitering over lessons, no weary yawning behind the covers of wearisome
text-books.
Promptly at four o'clock was to be a meeting of importance. It
would be "just horrid" to be detained in the recitation-room over
an imperfectly-prepared lesson, while the others hastened to Miss
Benedict's room, to be met with her questioning as to the where and
why of the absent member. Mrs. Foster had never seen better work done
than went on among her girls during the weeks that followed.
There was need for committee meetings, and for almost endless
discussions of ways and means. The voluntary offerings were all in, and
though each had done her best, all knew that the sum total was meager
enough. Money must certainly be earned, but the grave question was, How?
"Oh, there are ways," declared Miss Benedict, with a confidence that of
itself inspired courage. "Of course, there are a good many ways; and we
must think them up. Earning money is never very easy business, and we
must begin by understanding, that as a matter of course, there is work,
and disagreeable work, of some sort, in store for each one of us."
The girls, each and all, declared themselves ready for work, but
totally in the dark. They knew how to save money, the most of them,
provided they could get hold of any to save; but as for earning it,
they really had never earned a cent in their lives. There had been no
opportunity, so they declared.
"We will make opportunities," announced the brave young leader, to
whom money had hitherto flowed in an unbroken stream. But her courage
was contagious, as true courage often is, and the girls laughed,
and announced themselves as ready, even to _make_ opportunities, if
somebody would show them how.
"Let me see," said Miss Benedict; her head dropped a little to one
side, her chin resting on her hand in the attitude that she used to
assume, when Dora said she was planning a house and lot for some
protégé. "To begin with, there are things to be sold by agencies."
Two or three girls gravely shook their heads; one shrugged her
shoulders as an evidence of dismay, not to say disgust, and Ruth
Jennings spoke:
"Book agents! We can't do it, Miss Benedict. There are not three people
in South Plains who ever think of buying a book. One of the creatures
canvassed the whole town last summer; was in every house within three
miles, and she sold just four books. A good book it was, too; but the
people who had money to spare didn't want it, and the people who wanted
it hadn't the money. I was never more sorry for anybody in my life than
I was for that poor girl, who wore out a pair of shoes and a pair of
gloves, and spoiled her bonnet, to say nothing of her temper. And she
was voted the greatest nuisance we ever had in this village, and that
is saying a great deal."
Miss Benedict laughed merrily. Ruth's voluble tongue always amused her.
"I don't mean books," she explained. "There are other things; for
instance, hair-pins."
The sentence closed with a little laugh, and seemed to be suggested
by the dropping of one of the gleaming things at that moment from her
hair; but there was that in her voice which made the girls think there
was a real suggestion hidden in it, though they could not see how.
"Hair-pins!" repeated Ruth, in puzzled tone.
"Yes: really and truly, not metaphorically. I bought some last night
at the store in the village; the best, the clerk gravely assured me,
that were to be had. Wretched things! I wore one for an hour, then
threw it in the stove; it seemed to me that it pulled each hair of
my head during that one hour. Look at the kind we ought to have!"
Whereupon she drew the gleaming thing out again, and passed it around
for minute scrutiny. "Blued steel, they are, you see; that is the trade
mark; each one is finished to a high degree of smoothness. One who has
used a single paper of them could not be persuaded to content herself
with any other kind. Cheap they are, too. Actually cheaper than those
instruments of torture I bought last night. I sent to my sister by the
morning mail, to send me a box forthwith. That suggested the business
to me, I presume. There are worthless imitations, but the genuine sort
can be bought by the quantity very cheaply indeed, and a respectable
profit might be made on them until the people were supplied. It
isn't as though we were at work in a city, where women could supply
themselves without any trouble. It is a work of genuine mercy, I think,
to rescue the ladies from those prongs to which they have to submit."
"Turn hair-pin pedlers!" said Mary Burton. There was a laugh on her
face, but the slightest upward curve to her pretty lip. Mary felt above
the suggestion.
Her father was a farmer, decidedly well-to-do, and owned and lived in
one of the prettiest places about South Plains.
"Yes," said the millionnaire's daughter, who had lived all her life in
a palatial home such as Mary Burton could not even imagine, "pedlers,
if you like the name; why not? It is a good, honest business, if one
keeps good stock, and sells at honest prices.
"I like it very much better than selling cake, and flowers, and
nuts, and candy, in the church, at wicked prices, in the name of
benevolence."
There was a general laugh over this hint. South Plains had had its day
at such work as this, and those girls knew just how "wicked" the prices
were, and how questionable the ways which had been resorted to in order
to secure customers.
"I'd as soon sell hair-pins as anything else," affirmed Ruth Jennings.
"I would like some of them myself; we always get wretched ones down at
the corner store. But, Miss Benedict, do you believe much could be made
just out of hair-pins?"
"Not out of hair-pins alone; but there are other things, plenty of
them; little conveniences, you know, that people do not think of, until
they are brought to their doors, and that are so cheap, it seems a pity
not to buy them, if only for the sake of getting pleasantly rid of a
nuisance." This with a merry glance at Ruth.
"For instance, there are some charming little calendar cards being
gotten up for the holiday sales, on purpose for the children. They
are mounted on an easel, and contain a Bible verse for every day in
the year, with a bit of a quotation from some good author, in verse,
you know; exquisite little selections, just suited to children; on
each Sabbath the card contains the Golden Text of the Sabbath-school
lesson. They are just as pretty as possible, and retail for twenty
cents. I don't believe there are many mothers who could resist the
temptation of buying one for their children. But useful things, viewed
from a practical standpoint, sell the best. I have always heard that
the country was the place to get pies, and custards, and all such good
things?"
"It is," said one of the girls, with a confident nod of her head. "This
is the greatest place for pies you ever saw! I know people who have a
pie of some sort for breakfast, dinner and supper. No use in trying to
start a bakery here. People all make their own, and plenty of it."
Miss Benedict looked her satisfaction.
"Then there are plenty of burnt fingers, I am sure. Nettie, my dear,
you said you helped your mother on Saturday, which I suppose is
baking-day. How many times have you blistered your poor little fingers
trying to lift out a hot and heavy pie from the oven?"
"More times than I should think of trying to count; and, for that
matter, I have done a great deal worse than to burn my fingers. Only
last Saturday I tipped a pumpkin pie upside down on the floor; mother's
clean floor, it had just been mopped. The tin was hot, you see, and
the cloth slipped somehow, so that my bare fingers came right on the
hottest part, and I just squealed, and dropped the whole thing. Oh,
such a mess!"
"Precisely," said Miss Benedict, looking unsympathetically pleased with
the story. "I have no doubt that we should find quite a noble army of
martyrs among you in that very line, or among your mothers; you girls
would be more likely to 'squeal and drop it,' as Nettie has said. But
now I want to know what is to hinder us from being benefactors to our
race, and earning an honest penny in the bargain, by sending for a
box full of pie-lifters, and offering one to every housekeeper in
South Plains? They are cheap, and I don't believe many pie-bakers would
refuse one."
"Pie-lifters!" "I never heard of such an institution." "What in the
world are they?" Three questioning voices.
"Oh, just ingenious little pieces of iron, so contrived that they will
open and shut like an old-fashioned pair of tongs, only much more
gracefully; they adjust themselves to the size of the tin, or plate,
and close firmly, so that even a novice can lift the hottest pumpkin
pie that ever bubbled, and set it with composure and complacency on the
table at her leisure."
"I should think they would be splendid!"
This, in varying phraseology, was the general vote.
"Then I'll tell you of one of the greatest nuisances out. Look here!
Did you ever see a more starched-up linen cuff than this is?"
The girls looked admiringly. No; they never did. It shone with a lovely
polish, the means of securing which was unknown to the most domestic
of them.
"Well," explained Miss Benedict, "it isn't linen at all. By the way, I
am trying to economize in laundry work. It is nothing but paper, but
with such a good linen finish that nobody ever discovers it, and they
answer every purpose. I find they don't keep them at the corner store,
and your young gentleman friends would like them, I am sure. They can
be had at the factory very reasonably, indeed. I shouldn't wonder if
we would better invest in some. But that was not what I started out to
say. When you get a pair of cuffs nicely laundried, so that they are
stiff and shining, how do you enjoy struggling with them to get the
cuff button in, or to get it out--especially if you are in a hurry?"
This query produced much merriment among two of the girls, which the
elder sister presently explained:
"You ought to ask that question of our brother Dick. He does have the
most trying times with his cuff buttons. He wants his cuffs so stiff
they can almost walk alone, and then he fusses and struggles to get the
buttons in so as not to break the cuff. He is just at the age, Miss
Benedict, to be very particular about such things, and sometimes he
gets into such a rage. Last Sunday he split one of his buttons in half
a dozen pieces tugging at it. I tried to help him, but I couldn't get
the thing in; they are a dreadful nuisance."
"Ah, but look at this." A sudden, dexterous movement, and the button
was standing perpendicularly across the button-hole, and could be
slipped in or out with perfect ease.
The girls looked and admired and exclaimed. They had never seen such a
contrivance.
"But they are very expensive, are they not?" This question came from
the ever-practical Ruth.
Miss Benedict readjusted her cuff with a sudden quivering of the lip,
as a rush of memories swept over her. Those heavy gold cuff buttons,
with their rare and delicate designs, had been among her father's
gifts, less than a year ago.
"These are rather so," she said presently, struggling to keep her voice
steady, "but the device for opening and shutting is introduced into
plain buttons, which can be had for twenty-five cents a set; and I
think they are a great comfort especially to young men."
This is only a hint of the talk. It was continued at several meetings,
and plans at last were perfected, and orders made out and sent to the
city for a dozen or more useful articles, none of them bulky, all of
them cheap. The arrangement was, that each young lady should take her
share of the articles, keep her individual account, and thenceforth go
armed; hair-pins and cuff buttons in her pocket, ready, as opportunity
offered, to suggest to a friend the advisability of making a desirable
purchase. If she went to a neighbor's of an errand, she was in duty
bound to take a pie-lifter under her shawl, and describe its merits.
Did she meet a reasonably-indulgent mother, out were to come the pretty
calendar cards, and the agent thereof was to hold herself prepared to
descant eloquently on their beauties. Thus, through the whole stock in
trade.
As for the "nuisance" part, of course it would be a good deal of a
nuisance, and a good deal of a cross; especially when they met with
surly people who did not even know how to _refuse_ politely. But as
workers enlisted for the war, they were to be ready to bear such
crosses, always endeavoring to carry on their work on strictly business
principles; to descend to no urging or unlady-like pressure, but simply
to courteously offer their goods at honest prices; if, after such
effort, they received replies that were hard to bear, they must just
bear them for the sake of the cause. Thus decreed the heroic leader;
adding, by way of emphasis, that all ways of earning money had their
unpleasant side she supposed, and all workers had moments in which
their work could only be looked upon in the light of a cross. _Would_
those girls ever know what a cross it had been to her, Claire Benedict,
to come to South Plains and teach them music? This part she _thought_.
Such crosses were not to be brought out to be talked about. Hers was
connected with such a heavy one, that it would bear mentioning only to
Him who "carried her sorrows."